It just occurred to me that non-melting Hobnobs are the first step to
reasserting British superiority.

The most heartening newspaper headline I’ve read lately said: “Britain Leads the World in Non-Melting Chocolate.” I must say it made my heart swell with pride. It turns out that British scientists have found a way of preventing the chocolate on Hobnobs from melting.

It was David Willetts, the Science Minister, who drew attention to this particular triumph of British inventiveness. “Understanding what is happening to chocolate at a molecular level,” he said, “is enabling us to develop chocolate that does not melt in a warm climate.”

Surely now Britain can bring civilisation to all those chocolatey, sticky-fingered foreigners and we can re-establish our empire in Africa and Asia. As British pioneers, we will set off again across the parched plains, followed by lines of porters carrying huge boxes of biscuits on their heads, opening up trade routes and spreading the news of non-meltabilty. People will marvel and say: “Mad dogs and Hobnobs go out in the midday sun.”

I am confident that non-melting chocolate is just the first step in a great flowering of British inventiveness. Even at this moment, in some secret laboratory, scientists are almost certainly setting about understanding what is happening to a custard cream filling at a molecular level so they can put an end to the inconvenience of custard cream biscuits coming unstuck and separating. From there, it is but a short step to improve the adhesiveness of the filling of those silly little pink wafers.

If they succeed, what dreams we can dream! The unbreakable cream cracker, the non-crumbling oatcake, even, perhaps, a method for eliminating the cardboard taste in a Ryvita. Grave committees of white-coated men are meeting somewhere and working out ways of dragging the jammie dodger into the 21st century.